A is for Artist
by Elspeth1
Summary: After what had probably been several days of sustained whining, Joe Rogers had come home with a pack of eight Crayola crayons and a notebook.


**Title:** A is for Artist  
**Author:** **elspethdixon**  
**Rated:** G  
**Disclaimer:**The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this fan-written work.

**Notes****:** Written for the cap--ironman comm's alphabet challenge (actually cap(underscore)ironman, but ff,net doesn't like underscores). Because my sister and I always wanted the one of the giant 64 or 72 packs of Crayola Crayons.

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_A is for Artist_

The winter Steve had been nine, they hadn't been able to pay the heating bill, and the heat in the Rogers' tiny apartment had been turned off. It had happened to three other families on their block that January. 1930 had been a bad year for everyone.

His parents blamed the lack of heat when he got sick -- a deep, racking chest cold that got worse and worse and wouldn't go away -- and after several angry late-night arguments that Steve wasn't supposed to have heard, Joe Rogers took his wife's jewelry to the pawn shop and came back with enough money to get the heat turned back on and take Steve to a doctor.

The bronchitis went away after that, but Steve still ended up spending almost two weeks in bed, so bored that even doing the lessons Arnie brought home from school for him was a welcome diversion.

After what had probably been several days of sustained whining -- Arnie was not allowed to come over and play, because he might catch whatever Steve had -- his father had come home with a pack of eight Crayola crayons and a notebook.

He'd managed to make enough money on the docks that week to get Sarah's wedding ring out of pawn, and there had been just enough left over, after paying the butcher and the grocer, for the art supplies.

Steve didn't find out about that part until later, though. Crayons were for little kids, and nine was much too old for kid stuff, but he loved them anyway. He went through four more notebooks before the crayons were finally worn down to nothing. By that point, he was twelve, and his father was gone, and he threw the worn-out stubs of crayons into the river and pretended that his eyes didn't tear up when he did.

He used pencil and ink, mostly, these days. Sometimes charcoal, or prismatic markers. Tools that let you do fine detail work. He didn't pick up crayons again until decades later, when Scott Lang joined the Avengers and brought his little girl with him.

"You can have the Barbie Dream Rock Star coloring book," Cassie announced, with the air of one conveying a great favor. "I'm going to color in the Disney Princess one."

"Thank you," Steve said gravely. He sat down crossed-legged on the floor next to Cassie and opened the proffered coloring book to a random page. "I need yellow for Barbie's hair," he added, after a surveying the black and white picture for a moment.

Cassie dropped an entire fistful of yellow crayons in front of him, everything from a light, lemonade-colored yellow to orangey-yellow to a yellow so dark it was nearly brown. "You should use the shiny one that looks like gold," she instructed. "And put in blue streaks."

"How many shades of yellow are in this box?" Steve asked, startled.

"A lot, I guess. It's one of the great big boxes, with," she squinted carefully at the label, "ninety-six crayons. My Daddy got it for me. Except it's not really ninety-four, because I lost two of the red ones."

"That's a lot of crayons," Steve observed. Then he selected the two shades of yellow that would look the most natural for blonde hair, dug through the massive box to find two more crayons in light brown -- 'tumbleweed' and 'raw sienna,' the paper labels said -- and concentrated on filling in the individual strands of Barbie's hair. The light in the picture, he decided, was coming from the upper left, where the star-shaped stage lights were, so the left side of her hair needed more highlights than the right…

"My dad got me crayons, too, when I was your age," he told Cassie after a few minutes, moving on fill in Barbie's skin with 'apricot.' "No coloring book, though. I'd draw pictures with pencil and color them in."

"Wow." She sounded deeply impressed. "Crayons have been around forever. Was your box of crayons as good as mine?"

"Every bit as good," Steve told her, and realized, with a faint touch of surprise, that he meant it.

Jarvis hung Cassie's picture of Princess Jasmine on the fridge in the Mansion's kitchen. At her insistence, he hung Steve's picture next to it.

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End file.
